


Happy (Christmas) Lights

by ladyshadowdrake



Series: Happy Lights [4]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Christmas stuff, Colony, F/F, F/M, Fluff, Gen, Happy Lights, M/M, Multi, Other, Tentacles
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-27
Updated: 2015-12-27
Packaged: 2018-05-09 19:29:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,278
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5552435
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ladyshadowdrake/pseuds/ladyshadowdrake
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The colony pays a visit to earth just in time for Christmas.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Happy (Christmas) Lights

**Author's Note:**

> A couple days late, but Merry Christmas.

Happy (Christmas) Lights

 

The colony was not accustomed to being separated from its parts. Leaving Steve colony for the second time had been. Uncomfortable. The Individual Tony had promised that Steve colony would come ‘visit,’ but the colony did not understand the context for ‘visit,’ or when it would occur. Steve colony could not travel through the void without artificial assistance, but the Individual Brother Loki was a portal maker. Brother Loki was damaged when the colony left. Perhaps Brother Loki had not been repaired.

It was thus conceivable that Steve colony’s ‘visit’ might not occur for a very long time. Steve colony was fragile, and not very good at keeping itself warm. It was small, and the individuals separated from the whole far too often. The colony did not like to consider that perhaps Steve colony would be unable to ‘visit,’ but this was a distinct possibility. It wondered, again, if perhaps it should have simply brought Steve colony home. It was a very young colony, and perhaps it did not understand the danger it was in by being separated from the larger mass. Steve colony insisted that it was ‘home,’ and yet it had expanded by a mere 44.444444444444 percent in the colony’s absence, and only 18.181818181818181 percent while the colony was present. Steve colony was beautiful with lights, but Steve colony was not very good at protecting itself.

Interfering in the development of other creatures was contrary to the colony’s purpose. It did not wish to assimilate other creatures, but only to understand them. Steve colony was. Different. Steve colony was happy lights, _Steve colony_ had assimilated the colony. Steve colony was part of the colony, and Steve colony had been separate from the main colony for too long.

If Steve colony would not ‘visit’ the colony, the colony would ‘visit’ Steve colony.

~*~

“Sir,” Jarvis announced over the thunder of Tony’s music, “There is a portal opening on the roof. Energy signatures and configuration match that of the colony. Shall I open the hangar jet and fire smoke screen?”

Tony hit his head on the undercarriage of the Aston Martin and cursed, fumbling out, “ _Yes_!” _Guys, the colony is on the roof. Are there any big bads in the neighborhood?_

There was a flurry of jumbled responses, ranging from _I’ll call Fury_ to _Fuck yeah_ to _Maybe it’s just here for a visit_? Tony couldn’t even pick out individual voices in all the tumult. He squirmed out from under the car and took off for the elevator. Bucky was waiting for him impatiently, holding his left hand over the sensor to keep it open. Tony sped past him and they took the elevator to the roof, neither speaking, but both radiating excitement and concern. Bucky reached out and took his hand once Tony started to tap his toe, and Tony squeezed his palm securely.

Tony could feel the colony when they were still two floors away. It was already on the roof with Steve, Natasha, Darcy, and Phil. The elevator _ping_ ed open in the hangar bay just as Clint and Thor made it up the stairs, with Bruce trailing a few steps behind. The vanguard of the colony’s limbs rounded the corner into the hangar bay, and it was so much like homecoming that Tony’s chest tightened. He hauled Bucky forward, and they were scooped up together. He experienced a moment of vertigo as the colony pulled him back toward the main mass even while it moved forward into the bay. He felt the muscles along his spine relaxing and he curled around the thick green limb even as it rolled him into Bucky’s chest. The subcolony was smaller than its last visit, and Tony felt none of the tension or bad lights as when it arrived to warn them of the Chitauri invasion.

 _Tony,_ it greeted happily, and then said all of their names in turn, settling them into nest and counting heads. Jane made it up after they were all curled into the dome of tentacles, and she laughed happily when she was deposited in Darcy’s lap.

 _Where is Brother Loki?_ The colony asked. It went through their names again. _Steve, Tony, Bruuuuce, Clint, Thor, Jane, Darcy, Phil, Natasha, Bucky. Where is Brother Loki?_

 _Loki?_ Steve queried, but not with much hope. In the fourteen months since the colony’s last visit, Loki’s physical health had returned, but he still refused to acknowledge any of them through the telepathic bond.

 _He was in his lab when last I checked_ , Thor provided. _I can retrieve him,_ he offered, but sounded understandably reluctant to be parted from the nest. 

“Jarvis, can you open the double doors? Cancel the smoke screen.” It wasn’t actual smoke but a photographic counter measure that made it difficult for a lens to focus on the roof of the building. It was a drain on the tower’s power to use it, but Tony ran it at random intervals so if anyone were monitoring the top of the tower, they wouldn’t be able to track a pattern. The doors had been refitted so they withdrew into the wall rather than opening out, and the colony flowed through it without having to let any of them go. The safe nest was warm and quiet as they all got reacquainted with the colony, and the colony made short work of pulling them out of their clothing and examining them for new injuries.

 _Damage?_ It asked uncertainly, flipping Bucky upside-down and ghosting over the tattoo crawling across his back and down his right hip. It was a constant work in progress, and not something Bucky talked about, but Tony understood. His body had belonged to someone else for so long that he wanted to make it his own again. Tony had built him half a dozen prosthetics in the last year, all different styles and colors, and he went through his wardrobe faster than even Pepper.

 _Not damage,_ Bucky said simply, and the colony inspected it more closely, prodding at with tiny tentacles.

 _Damage,_ it protested.

 _Intentional damage,_ Natasha supplied for him, and the colony grouchily accepted the explanation. A tentacle wound around Tony’s leg and tugged him out of his pants. It inspected the new scar across his thigh, flickering orange and blue.

 _Damage,_ it said testily, and then asked, _Intentional damage?_ But Tony could hear a note of something like… annoyance, or maybe sarcasm. He felt so unreasonably proud.

 _Not voluntary damage_ , Tony said, and thought of his last battle with a few dozen doombots trying to take advantage of the chaos left in the Chitauri’s wake. Von Doom had assisted in Earth’s defense during the invasion, but he’d made his bid for alien technology once the Chitauri had been driven off. Tony had been caught in just the wrong place by a bot. One of his armor plates had buckled and cut a good three inches into the tender skin on his inner thigh, taking months to heal and leaving behind a nasty scar. The nest flared brilliant red as it examined similar injuries on Clint and Natasha, pulsing unhappily in shades ranging from scarlet to pink. The tentacle examining his scar coiled firmly around his leg and squeezed hard enough to make him see stars.

 _Bad flash!_ He tried to tell it, but it ignored him and squeezed again. When he tried to struggle away, it wrapped him up in a dozen flashing limbs and rippled around him in a soothing caress. Clint and Natasha were dragged over beside him, Clint struggling to breathe as he’d been unlucky enough to have taken his injury to the chest. Natasha stoically accepted the coils around her left leg and poked at Tony.

 _Baby,_ she teased. The colony had left her entirely unencumbered except for her captured leg, and she was propped up on her elbows, lovely with all her skin on display. Tony stuck his tongue out at her, and she grabbed it between her fingers with her stupid lightning reflexes. _Didn’t Jarvis ever tell you it was rude to stick your tongue out?_

 _Didn’t anyone ever tell you not to grab other people’s tongues? What’s wrong with you?_ He tried to draw her fingers in enough to bite her, but she let his tongue go with a smirk and leaned over to kiss him.

 _What are you even_ doing _?_ Tony demanded. He’d seen the colony wrap damaged limbs up before, but he’d never seen it try to heal one of its human colony members this way.

 _Repair damage_ , it said stubbornly. The limb wrapped around his leg abruptly grew warm and he yelped at the surge of heat.

“You okay, you three?” Bucky asked, still hanging upside down with a few hundred hair-fine tentacles examining his tattoo.

“Burning all my skin off, but fine,” Tony replied as the heat retreated, and then surged again, even hotter. Clint went quiet in the colony bond, unconscious, and Natasha shifted around to wrap around him. The colony was unconcerned by this turn of events, and obviously not sure why Tony didn’t just go dormant as well. For his part, Tony gritted his teeth stubbornly, and started counting prime numbers.

 _Where is Brother Loki_? The colony repeated when it had settled into the living room. The room was more-or-less at it had been left, and pillows, cushions, and stuffed animals started appearing between tentacles, where they were sorted with the colony’s customary seemingly-random method. Tony felt more than heard Steve giving directions to Loki’s lab space. He was intertwined so tightly with the colony that it may as well have been his own arm that snaked down the hallway and nudged the lab door open. He understood Loki’s startled squawk not quite as a sound, but more as vibration and lights, and then Loki was tumbling into the nest, already half out of his long robe and bitching about it.

“Unhand me!” he snapped, squirming away. The colony enjoyed it when its humans squirmed, and it wrapped more tightly around him, tickling at his sides until he laughed aloud. “When did this monstrosity arrive?” he asked, but Tony could hear the reluctant pleasure in his voice, and he was doing his best to appear very grumpy while simultaneously helping the tentacles with the catches on his robe.

 _Brother Loki,_ the colony cooed happily, burying him under half a dozen tentacles until all that was visible of him was a single hand and a few locks of dark hair.

Tony tried to focus on the never-solved curiosity of why the colony was so incredibly fond of ‘Brother Loki’ to distract himself from the burning in his thigh, but it wasn’t a question any of them had been able to answer, and Loki himself was frustratingly closed-lipped about it.

In short order, Steve was wrapped up to the neck in a pink and blue polka-dotted blanket and Darcy was happily swinging in a hammock made of what looked like a curtain. Jane was cuddled into Thor’s side with Phil spread out over their laps, and Bruce was ensconced in a mini-nest of stuffed animals and pillows.

 _Why have you come, my friend?_ Thor asked when the colony settled on where it wanted them and stopped fussing with the pillows. _Is there some danger?_

 _Steve colony does not visit,_ the colony explained, flickering a multitude of colors – concerned, primarily, but also loneliness- _Colony visits Steve colony._

 _I’ve been working on it,_ Tony tried to soothe, feeling abruptly guilty. He _had_ been working on it, but between all the massive clean-up efforts still underway after the Chitauri attack, visits back and forth to Asgard for Loki’s various trials, and all the numerous jackasses who’d gotten their hands on alien tech and thought that made them something, his attention had been more than a little divided.

 _Brother Loki is portal maker,_ the colony persisted. It sounded exactly like Tony imagined a grandmother would – _what, you can’t pick up a phone and call your grandmother on Christmas?_ – and he was so amused by the thought that he almost missed the point.

 _Brother Loki is portal maker?_ Bruce prompted, taking the words right off of his telepathic tongue.

“LOKI!” Tony snapped, perfectly happy to have an excuse to blow off some of the pressure of his ‘healing’ massage.

“Mmmfph?”

 _Please move Brother Loki so that he may speak,_ Steve prompted, and the colony reluctantly shifted around so Loki’s tentacle-pile was more-or-less upright. He glared at them all, his mussed hair fluffed up around his head.

“What does it mean that you’re a _portal maker_?” Tony demanded, doing his best to glare at him, but the best he could manage was to get his head a few inches off the nest ‘floor.’

“You are aware that I possess the ability to open portals from one location to another,” Loki sniffed.

“You didn’t tell us you could open a portal to the colony homeworld!”

“How could I open a portal to a place I’ve never been?”

Tony made a frustrated screaming noise against his teeth, and then did it again when the nursing limb gave him an especially hard squeeze. It relaxed all at once, leaving his leg pulsing in time to his heartbeat and his foot tingling painfully.

“We know where it is,” Bruce cut in, explaining more gently than Tony would have. “And since we all share a telepathic bond, you also know where it is.”

Loki didn’t acknowledge the logic of Bruce’s explanation. It was hard to tell through the cocoon of tentacles, but Tony thought he’d shrugged.

“Hey, how does the colony know that you’re a ‘portal maker’ if we didn’t?” Darcy asked curiously from her hammock. She twisted to lay on her stomach so she could look down at him, her legs trailing off to either side. Several tentacles lifted to play with her feet, so she kicked her legs and wiggled her toes. Their attention turned to Loki, waiting for an answer.

Lip twisted into a sneer, Loki asked, “How do you think the colony got here the first time?”

~*~

Assured that none of them were damaged, and pleased with Tony, Clint, and Natasha’s progress, the colony had reformed into a carpet of peaks and valleys over the living room floor. The team was wrapped up on top of it, and Jarvis had provided a soft background of Korean pop for the colony’s enjoyment. It was turned down almost too low for Tony to hear, but the colony twitched and bounced in time with the beat.

“Brother,” Thor rumbled, “Please explain how you came to encounter the colony prior to its first visit to this realm.” He had his massive arms slung around Darcy and Jane, but his expression was anything but relaxed.

“The Chitauri delivering me to…” He let out a tired breath, and picked up, “They encountered the colony en route, and attacked it. A small section of limbs was separated from the whole, and I was able to… _slip my leash_ ,” he explained, borrowing Bucky’s words, “long enough to open a small portal in its path. I didn’t know, then, if I’d successfully gotten it to Earth. It was meant to drop right on top of this ridiculous tower, and obviously missed the mark.”

For several moments, no one spoke aloud. A wave of undirected thoughts flowed around the room. It was always different when the colony was present, passing on information about each other’s health and moods that they wouldn’t have been able to sense normally. Tony could tell that Clint was uncomfortable, could feel the throb of his ribs where the colony had forced out bone shards left behind from the break and sealed up micro cracks in his sternum. He could feel Steve’s frustration like it was old, dried blood. He felt so responsible for all of them, and Loki was his one duckling that just wouldn’t swim. Thor’s concern mingled with Jane’s, and clashed with Bruce’s curiosity. Natasha and Phil sat quietly assessing, and Darcy was willfully oblivious to the tension as she tried to teach the colony how to play chess.

“Why didn’t you think to share that information?” Steve asked, his voice tired and heavy. “We’ve been fighting dozens of legal battles for you, and you didn’t think to tell us that you arranged for the colony to warn us about the invasion?”

“I didn’t know they were going to warn you,” Loki insisted stubbornly.

“Then why did you do it?”

He didn’t answer, his features pulling into that tight frown that was as good as a neon sign over his head flashing _I’m not going to talk about this lalalalalalalalalala_. Bucky crawled out from under his blanket of tentacles and sat down next to Loki. They’d become something like friends over the last year, though it was a strange, quiet friendship. Tony didn’t understand it, but having Bucky next to him made Loki relax enough for it to be felt over their bond.

Tony could feel the discomfort pouring off Loki in such strong waves it more closely attached panic. He huffed out a sigh. “He’s not going to talk about it. Leave it alone.” _For now_.

Loki flinched subtly, but he gave no other indication that he’d heard Tony’s qualifier. He shifted subtly and burrowed down into the loops of tentacles draped over his thighs. They compliantly rose to wrap around his chest and opened to pull Bucky against his side. The anxiety only added to the general tension around the team. The season had been wearing on them all – Thanksgiving had only just passed, every speaker was already blaring Christmas music, and Tony could practically _taste_ the universal anxiety level of the Christmas season mounting in the air. A tiny electric shock zipped down his spine with a – haha – lightbulb of an idea. He wiggled his toes and squirmed out of his own bundle of tentacles.

“I have a better idea!” he announced to the room at large. “I say we get all the Christmas decorations out of storage early and introduce the colony to Christmas lights.”

The mood in the room visibly lifted, just in time for the elevator to ping open and Sam to cautiously ask, “…Are we about to be invaded?” as he crept into the main entryway.

“By _Christmas lights_ ,” Clint crowed.

 _Sam!_ The colony declared, one tentacle arching up several feet in front of him. It flickered gold at him when he waved at it.

“Thanksgiving was _two days ago_ ,” Sam said nonsensically, because he was not colony and did not understand the appeal of thousands of twinkling little lights. Really, Tony should have gone to the thousands of twinkling little lights _months_ ago, what had he even been thinking?

“And your point?”

The elevator door pinged open again and Pepper and Rhodey spilled into the room, looking harried. “Jarvis said the colony was – here?”

The colony trilled in pleasure to see them, but maintained the respectful distance that they’d established on the last visit, though it flickered a hopeful gold. Pepper stopped at the threshold and looked around the living room. It wasn’t unusual anymore for her to walk into the living room to a rotating lineup of Avengers cuddling in two’s and fives, and sometimes all of them down in the nest in various states of nakedness. She even joined them sometimes, taking advantage of Steve’s excellent foot massages and letting Phil play with her hair. She’d just as obviously expected more battle planning with the colony once again taking up pride-of-place in the living room.

“Do I need to report anything to my superiors?” Rhodey asked, directing his gaze to Steve, who’d been moved to lie face-down in Bucky’s lap, and was looking decidedly un-authority figure with his ass in the air. He presented a tempting target, but Tony was on the opposite side of the room.

“The colony is just here for a visit-!” Steve’s voice cut out in a sharp sound. Taking Tony’s suggestion to heart, the colony had lifted one thin tentacle and smacked it across his ass.

 _Pain?_ It asked, startled by Steve’s response. Tony started to laugh and one glittering brown tentacle rose to prod at him in confusion.

 _Intense,_ Steve supplied. _Please don’t do it again. Yet_.

 _Yet,_ Tony repeated happily.

“Right. We’re going to leave you all to get… reacquainted. Call me when it’s safe to come back up.” Sam gave the tentacle waving at him an uncertain look, and then reached out and tapped a finger on its tip. He jerked his hand back like he’d been shocked and hastily withdrew into the elevator while the entire colony lit up blinding gold.

 _Sam_ , it sang ecstatically. Tony shivered, feeling the briefest sense of _Sam_ zing up his spine, too quick for him to get any real insight from it. It was frustratingly inadequate and tantalizing all at once. He took an aborted step toward the elevator, but was unintentionally waylaid by Rhodey, who cuffed him on the shoulder and pointed at his nose.

“Have fun,” he said, shaking his head, and wrapping an arm around Pepper’s waist to lead her back into the elevator.

“Don’t think this means you get out of our salon appointment, Jane!” Pepper called over her shoulder, and Jane pretended not to hear her.

~*~

The colony bemusedly helped them string Christmas lights up around the penthouse. Christmas had never been A Thing for Tony. Christmas with Howard had been an odd combination of The Stark Christmas Show and You’re Especially Not Good Enough Today. From the time he'd been old enough to convince the pilots to take off without Dear Dad on board (12), Tony had made it a point to be out of the country during Christmas.  He’d been unconscious for his first Christmas with the Avengers, and they’d spent the subsequent Christmas in a happy heap on the living room floor. Clint’s love of Christmas had been a revelation, and Tony had gone out of his way just to see him happy. It had put a new touch to a holiday he’d always hated.

Sorting through the various plugs, Tony tested each in turn and gently nudged a dozen wandering limbs away from the high voltage socket. Ignoring him, they pried it away from his hand and held it up, flickering over it curiously. The socket wasn’t running an electrical current, so Tony let it go. The colony knew more about how energy worked than he did, even if the way humans used it was a curious spectacle to the colony. He should probably be worried about Clint toying with the lights than the colony. Leaning back against the wall to observe the controlled chaos, he spliced into a wire.  

Tottering on a ladder with a dozen tentacles hovering around him and flashing alternately with concern and flickering golden lights, Clint stapled a line of lights to the ceiling. He was working on an attractive spiral pattern of alternating purple and white lights, while Natasha ran purple lanterns around the windows. Tony sat in the middle of tumult, watching Steve – wrapped to the waist with tentacles – hanging stars around Clint’s spiral. It was really weirdly sweet. And Tony was probably not ever going to take the lights down. The colony hadn’t figured out the point of the cold bulbs, though it was doing its best. Hundreds of tiny tentacles spiraled around the light strings and started loosening the bulbs, inspecting each and putting them back.

 “I found these in storage,” Pepper announced, re-entering the room with a box held against her chest. “Rhodey is on his way with a tree.” She stepped over a pair of tentacles that had followed Loki back to his lab. Loki had retreated as soon as Thor explained that ‘Christmas’ was comparable to ‘Yule.’ He’d just rolled his eyes and fled from the room. Bucky had hesitated, but at a nod from Steve, had followed him, both with tentacles wrapped firmly around their waists.

Pepper waited for Tony’s carpet of tentacles to pull away from him enough for her to sit down. Tony marveled at her as she sat down next to him and folded her knees to the side. The reality of their unique living situation was one that not many people would have been able to accept with such calm, and watching her settle in with a dozen alien tentacles in touching distance was awe-inspiring. She set the box down between them and pulled it open. Inside were small, paper wrapped packages, and Tony didn’t recognize them exactly, but he wasn’t surprised when she unwrapped a delicately crafted glass ball.

“These are lovely,” she said, holding it up to eye level. “They don’t look like the Stark Tower ornaments, and I couldn’t find any more like them.”

“They were my mother’s,” Tony said, looking away from her. “They were made by my great grandfather.”

Pepper pulled the ornament in, cradling it with her other hand and giving Tony a guilty look. “I didn’t realize. I’ll put them back.”

Tony cleared his throat, and was surprised when he heard himself say, “It’s fine. They’ll look nice with the lights.”

 _Bad lights?_ The colony asked, snaking a limb up to stroke against his cheek. He nuzzled against it, aware of Steve’s attention from across the room.

 _Not bad lights,_ Tony said. _Just…_

_Intense?_

_No, not intense. Maybe a little bit sad lights, but happy too. I was thinking about my mother,_ Tony struggled to explain. It was something that he was not used to talking about with anyone, not even Steve, not even Pepper, or Rhodey. It was different with the colony, more like talking to his own soul than another person.

 _Who is mother?_ The colony asked. _Mother is Steve colony?_

_Mother is…_

_Tony’s female progenitor,_ Bruce offered gently. He’d explained human procreation after the colony was first introduced to Natasha and confused by the differences in her physiology.

The colony flickered pink and blue with interest. _Where is Mother?_

Silence fell in the room for several seconds. Tony could feel the energy shifting around the room, gathering in fits and starts as one member or another of his colony readied themselves to speak. He felt Steve steeling himself for an explanation, but it was Tony’s explanation to give, and he wasn’t worried that the colony wouldn’t understand.

_My mother is dead. She died when I was a child._

_The limb is lost,_ the colony observed. _All of Steve colony’s progenitors are lost?_

 _Mine and Loki’s progenitors alone remain,_ Thor answered. _They reside on Asgard._

_Pepper’s are still around, and Rhodey’s. Sam’s mom is still alive._

_Not Steve colony,_ the colony mourned. It was obviously and immediately curious about the concept of parents, and disappointed that it wouldn’t be able to meet them. The colony reproduced very differently, and human reproduction was fascinating to it.

“I thought I’d gotten used to you carrying on telepathic conversations,” Pepper said softly, breaking into the colony’s disappointed murmuring. “It’s so different with the colony is here, but somehow I can tell when you’re… communicating with it.”

“You know,” Tony said, “You could talk with it.”

“I’ve already told you that I don’t want to be a part of ‘Steve colony,’” she said, putting the glass ornament back in the box.

“It can talk to you without forming a lasting bond.” Tony shrugged. “We can’t. Well… maybe Steve can. Not sure these days, but the colony definitely can.”

With tentacles arranged around him almost like a chair, Steve looked down at him curiously. It still amazed Tony that Steve didn’t understand exactly how integral he was to their colony, and how far away from strictly human he’d come. He knew things instinctively that he didn’t consciously realize he knew, and he was the hub of their entire network. Tony wasn’t sure he ever wanted Steve to figure it out.

“I’ll think about it,” Pepper said after a moment of consideration.

Before Tony could press her about it, the proximity alarm sounded on the landing pad. “Mr. Rhodes approaches in the War Machine armor,” Jarvis told him. Rhodey didn’t need permission to land, and Tony levered himself upright to watch Rhodey land on the pad with a giant fir tree held over his shoulder. Jarvis opened the door for him, and the colony rose up to assist, wrapping the trunk in pair of strong limbs and tugging it away from him. The tree was pulled into the middle of the living room and inspected thoroughly.

 _Why_? It asked, ruffling through the branches, tiny tentacles tugging at needles while the larger limbs shook the whole ten foot tree as easily as a baby with a rattle.

Laughing, Steve and Clint took possession of the tree and directed it to the corner of the room, where Jane and Darcy waited with more lights and bundles of golden ornaments at their feet.

 _It’s a tradition,_ Steve said, _Something that we do with our… colonies._

The colony hummed in pleasure, though it was still colored with an undercurrent of bemused indulgence. It was happy for its human colony members’ happiness, even though it didn’t understand the point of the activity.

While the tree was being secured to its base, Rhodey hovered near the ceiling and watched all the chaos like he wasn’t sure where to land. One tentacle followed his progress, sticking strictly to the four and a half foot barrier that had been established on its first visit as ‘the human line.’ It compliantly pulled away when Rhodey aimed for the entryway and stepped out of the suit, leaving it to close up behind him. Once Rhodey had vacated the suit, the colony crept toward it cautiously. Rhodey laughed, and made a broad gesture to the suit in permission. Tony relayed the _have at it,_ and the tentacles swarmed over the suit. It had been modified several times since the colony had last inspected it, and it gave the armor the same curious care that it had applied to the team.

Rhodey watched for a moment, and then crossed the room to Tony’s other side, shaking his head over the mess of limbs and lights. He waved a hand to encompass the room. “This place is going to be visible from space once you turn these all on.”

“That’s the point,” Tony said.

Pulling a mess of wires into his lap to help sort and tie them, Rhodey leaned forward to look at his suit. It was almost invisible under the mass of limbs. “They’re a little like puppies.”

“You’re not wrong,” Tony said, reaching over Rhodey’s lap to steal two of the cords back. Rhodey batted at his fingers and took them back, getting them all tangled and out of order. Tony tried to sort out which ones he needed, and Rhodey compounded the issue by stealing more of Tony’s bundle. Four and a half feet away, a tentacle helpfully snagged the whole mess and yanked them all away.

“ _Cheating_ , Stark, that’s cheating!” Rhodey howled, and, unexpectedly, dove after the cords. The tentacles jumped like startled cats and reared back from him. Rhodey, taking horrible advantage of the four and a half foot barrier, scooped up the cords like poker chips.

Tony grabbed Rhodey’s ankle and yanked him back, while Pepper finally threw in on his side and jumped over Tony’s shoulders to tickle at Rhodey’s ribs.

“Seriously, right now? You guys, too?”

“I’m out numbered, Wilson, get over here!” Rhodey demanded while the colony arched over them in concern.

 _Conflict?_ It asked uncertainly, prodding at Steve to get him involved.

 _They’re just having fun,_ Steve said in response. He batted the prodding tentacle gently away, and said, “I’m not helping you untangle that mess.”

Sam jumped into the fray just then, and Pepper shrieked in laughter as he grabbed her around the waist and yanked her off the pile. She tripped him to the floor and he let his breath out in _woof_ , while she alternately giggled and apologized.

~*~

They ordered lots of pizza, and after significant argument from Clint and Darcy, everything on the menu at their favorite Chinese food place, turned on the full spectrum lights for the colony, and set to decorating the tree. With the tree wrapped in strings of lights, Darcy sat on the ground with Clint. They had one large bowl of popcorn and one of iridescent plastic beads, and were making long strings of garland with the popcorn that didn’t make into one of their mouths.  

“Did you ever make these growing up?” Clint asked, throwing a piece of popcorn at Steve.

Finished with the stars, Steve had moved to hanging sparkling golden balls on the tree. He caught the piece of popcorn and popped it into his mouth. “Sure. We didn’t have money for fancy decorations, and we never had a tree that was just ours. We’d get together with other families in the building, and decorate with whatever we had on hand. Fruit, cookies, balls of scrap fabric, popcorn.” He held up one of the balls – plastic and coated with glitter – and smiled at it. “My mother would have loved these.” He slid it onto the end of a bough and gave it a gentle pat.

“She woulda hated them,” Bucky interrupted, returning with a reluctant Loki in tow. He still had his host of tiny tentacles clinging to his back, fascinated by the ink under his skin. “Look at the mess they’re making, glitter everywhere.”

Steve laughed. “She would after the day was done, sure. But she would have been happy while they sparkled.”

Bucky nodded, stopping by the tree and looking up. He reached out to take the tip of one branch between his fingers and stroked his thumb over the waxy needles.

From the hallway, Loki looked on quietly, apparently oblivious to Tony’s attention. His expression was nothing short of a pout as he trudged behind Bucky, but Tony noticed that he kept one hand wrapped around the tentacle at his waist, fingers playing gently over the smooth skin. It glowed a gentle gold, sparks of light flickering over the tentacle’s skin with each touch of his fingertips. He turned his attention to Thor, who sat on the couch with a log as thick as his forearm in his lap. He had a dozen tentacles wrapped around his legs and chest, and was scattering bark everywhere as he carved into the branch.

“Come join me, brother,” Thor invited. The various conversations turned almost immediately from a mix of telepathic and verbal speech, to almost entirely verbal. Before Loki’s addition to the colony, they had fallen into a habit of conversing mostly telepathically, but Loki’s aversion to it had created a sense of tension in their conversations. When he was in the room, they tended to speak aloud.

“To carve the yule log?” Loki sneered. “I’d be happier…” He cut himself off and then said, “I’ll pass.” Pressing his hand to the tentacle at his waist, he made it half way across the room and hovered uncertainly. Clint threw a handful of popcorn at him.

“Come be useful,” he suggested while Loki gaped at him in shock.  

“You can be in charge of the beads,” Darcy added, holding the bowl out. Loki looked in between them and the garlands of popcorn and beads stretched around them in ribbons. He looked back at Thor, who was doing his best not to seem hopeful, and then sat down at Darcy’s side. Glancing at the garlands, he snapped his fingers. The popcorn and beads lifted out of their bowls en masse and started stringing themselves. Excited tentacles crowded around to nudge at the beads in the air, flickering gold as they danced.

“Cut that out!” Darcy said, smacking his arm. “Do it right.”

“How is this in any way incorrect? It is achieving the same result.”

“It’s _cheating_.”

“Is not!”

“Is –”

“ _Children_ ,” Steve interrupted, laughing. “Loki, it’s not about the end product, it’s about the process.”

Loki glared. “Then why isn’t Stark over here enjoying _the process_?”

“Because _Stark_ is over here making sure the penthouse doesn’t catch on fire when we turn these on,” Tony shot back.

“While my brother carves a yule log?” Loki snorted. “Have it your way.” He took the threaded needle Clint offered him and started scooping up beads. He flicked a forefinger and had the beads dance one at a time onto the needle and down the thread. Darcy groaned, but Clint just held up his needle and nudged Loki in the ribs with a foot until he obliged by doing the same with the popcorn.

“ _Boys_!” Darcy huffed, but she didn’t fight when Loki he finessed her string out of her hands and started another garland building itself. She rose to help Jane tie poinsettia ornaments to the end of the heavy boughs. Hands free, Clint started pelting them with popcorn, though most of the pieces ended up in the tree. Jane retaliated with a shower of silk flowers that small tentacles quickly rose to snatch out of the air.

Tony watched the entire thing with a dreamlike quality of observing rather than participating. It was so much the opposite of what he’d grown up with that he half expected to wake up any moment. It still amazed Tony that he did not feel any trepidation at the idea of _waking up_. If he woke now, he would experience a momentary pang of regret for the colony’s absence, but Steve would be curled against his back, Bucky’s mouth nuzzled into his neck. He would wake warm, and safe, and absolutely certain of much he was loved, and that was almost enough to overwhelm him most days.

 _You okay over there, sweetheart?_ Steve asked, his voice flooding into Tony’s mind like a soft wind. It had the echoing quality of private speech. Steve was the only one who could manage the tricky prospect of creating a private space in their colony bond with constant success, and Tony appreciate it.

 _Fantastic. Sweetheart,_ he added, amused and touched and not afraid at all for Steve to know it.

~*~

“Are you lighting my living room on fire again?” Tony demanded twisting around the couch at the first crack of the lighter. Thor was hunched over a brazier and doing his best to block it from sight. He peered over his shoulder at Tony with the most bullshit innocent look on his face. “Okay, so. Fire code.”

“ _You’re_ talking to someone about the fire code? You?” Bruce asked incredulously from across the room. “Didn’t you and Rhodey _entirely destroy_ the house in Malibu?”

“That was _not –”_ Rhodey started, a little tipsy with wine and red in the cheeks.

“So,” Tony interrupted, “Fire code. This is the – why I’m having the conversation about fire code. Responsible homeowner.” He pointed to his own head.

“I threatened to bribe all of his robotic suppliers into supply-blocking him if the insurance went up one more time,” Pepper confessed, the traitor. It was hard to keep secrets from his colony, and Tony liked knowing at least a few things that no one else did, even something as inconsequential as Pepper calmly laying out files for each of the suppliers he worked with and warning him that he wouldn’t get so much as a bolt from any of them for six months if they had to make one more property damage claim because he set something on fire.

“The yule log is an important tradition,” Thor defended as the log caught. Tony sighed, but he heard the quiet beeping of Jarvis’ fire monitoring protocols kicking on, and – insurance aside – Tony had always been a bit of pyro.

“I will maintain it carefully,” Thor promised. A crowd of tentacles wreathed the fire curiously, several smaller limbs spiraling up the trunk of Thor’s body to wrap in his hair, others peering over the brazier as the log crackled and hissed. He’d spent hours carving it just to light it on fire, but Tony had put far more work into something he meant to destroy to complain. He was just sorting out the last of the electrical issues, Rhodey having given up his dubious ‘helping’ more than an hour before in favor of a wine glass and a card game.

The mood had settled in the room as people slowly ran out of things to do and gathered around Thor’s fire. Tony watched Loki surreptitiously, and felt the faintest whisper of longing and sadness and loneliness from the man, but he didn’t move. If it had been Steve, he would have slid into his lap and nuzzled into his throat. If it had been Bucky, he would have wrapped their palms together and taken him down to the workshop to tinker on his arm, or one of the cars. If it had been Clint, he would have thrown something at him, with Natasha, he would have broken out throwing knives. Except for Clint and Bucky, no one was ever assured a reaction with Loki – at times he was almost heartbreakingly sweet, but most of the time he turned to acid if someone caught him in a moment of weakness.

Only after everyone else was settled around the fire did Loki move across the room. He took the seat left open at Thor’s left, pretending he didn’t know that they’d left it open on purpose. Thor leaned over and gripped his shoulder briefly, but let him go before Loki’s customary prickliness could surface.

“Are you joining us, Tony?” Steve asked, craning his head back to look at Tony.

Attaching the last plug, Tony crawled over the tentacles keeping him company. He shouldered his way in between Bucky and Phil, and settled at Steve’s feet. Steve’s clever fingers wove into his hair immediately and Tony leaned back against him.

 _I noticed you managed to get out of decorating,_ Steve noted.

 _I was very busy,_ Tony lied, _Did you see how many cords there were?_

 _Mmmhm_. Steve’s fingers dug into the muscles on either side of his spine. With the fire warming his cheeks, and his colony breathing and glowing around him, Tony felt himself getting tired and drifting off. They sat quietly as the log burned down to coals.

 _Can we turn them on now?_ Clint demanded once the fire had nearly gone out.

 _On?_ The colony asked curiously.

“Everyone ready to be blinded?” Tony asked aloud. Pepper moaned in slightly-more-than-tipsy dismay. She turned and buried her face in Phil’s shoulder, fingers coming perilous inches away from the tentacle draped over his shoulder. It quivered gently and pulled reluctantly away from her. The colony couldn’t be expected to maintain the barrier when Pepper, Rhodey, and Sam had been the ones slowly getting closer throughout the night.

“I think we’re ready,” Steve prompted.

“J… Hit the switch!” Tony called. At first, it was barely noticeable. The lights came up gradually, but the colony perked up at the first flicker of electricity. A pulse of gold flared through the colony, and it was suddenly alive with activity. The green and gold lights flickered to life on the tree, the ornaments throwing wild sparks around the room. Tony dropped to his back on the floor and watched as the lights on the ceiling flickered on and ran through a programed sequence. Steve folded down next to him, and Bucky appeared a second later on his other side. The contrast of Bucky’s smooth prosthetic to Steve’s serum-soft hand was a perfect end to perfect day.

 _Happy lights!_ The colony hummed.

 _Happy lights,_ they all responded in slow murmurs.

 

**Author's Note:**

> I make it a personal point to respond to all comments, even if it's just to say "thank you." However, if you don't want/need a response, feel free to included "NRN" (No response needed) in your comment. 
> 
> Come visit me on Tumblr: http://lightshadowverisimilitude.tumblr.com/
> 
> Fills my Stony Bingo square for "tentacles"


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